You find yourself in the cretaceous

[untermensche]

It is an easily testable claim to move to any part of the world and see what happens.

I have been on intercontinental flights. At no point did the the plane dip down, and when I arrived, up was still up and down was still down. Therefore, the Earth is flat, Einstein was a scamster, and absolute time exists.

Or something.

My position does not rest on a claim of absolute time.

It rests on the impossibility of any observer to move backwards in time.

 

[Jokodo]

It is an easily testable claim to move to any part of the world and see what happens.

I have been on intercontinental flights. At no point did the the plane dip down, and when I arrived, up was still up and down was still down. Therefore, the Earth is flat, Einstein was a scamster, and absolute time exists.

Or something.

My position does not rest on a claim of absolute time.

Of course it does. You keep saying that only the present exists. Without absolute time, there is no absolute present - therefore, things/events/configurations both exist and do not exist.

So either your intuition is wrong, or special relativity is wrong. My money's on your intuition.

 

[untermensche]

My position does not rest on a claim of absolute time.

Of course it does. You keep saying that only the present exists. Without absolute time, there is no absolute present - therefore, things/events/configurations both exist and do not exist.

So either your intuition is wrong, or special relativity is wrong. My money's on your intuition.

For any observer ALL that exists is the present.

THEIR present.

They have no access to my past present or future.

If all an observer has access to is their present of course it is impossible for them to move to the past.

They are stuck in an ever changing present only going one way. Moving away from their past.

 

[Jokodo]

My position does not rest on a claim of absolute time.

Of course it does. You keep saying that only the present exists. Without absolute time, there is no absolute present - therefore, things/events/configurations both exist and do not exist.

So either your intuition is wrong, or special relativity is wrong. My money's on your intuition.

For any observer ALL that exists is the present.

THEIR present.

They have no access to my past present or future.

If all an observer has access to is their present of course it is impossible for them to move to the past.

They are stuck in an ever changing present only going one way. Moving away from their past.

And if you never change direction, the distance from your original position uniformly increases.

On a flat earth, at least.

 

[untermensche]

For any observer ALL that exists is the present.

THEIR present.

They have no access to my past present or future.

If all an observer has access to is their present of course it is impossible for them to move to the past.

They are stuck in an ever changing present only going one way. Moving away from their past.

And if you never change direction, the distance from your original position uniformly increases.

On a flat earth, at least.

Not uniformly.

That would require uniform speed, which is impossible for a human.

 

[Jokodo]

well, monotously.

Way to miss the point though. The earth isn't exactly known to be flat, so neither is correct in reality, on the surface of a planet.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

To have a belief that time travel is possible also requires the belief that every configuration of the universe is stored and can be returned to somehow.

If past configurations are not stored somehow then of course it is impossible to return to the past.

A single observer (an abstraction) may have a slightly different time setting than some other observer (abstraction) but that is not evidence at all that every configuration of the universe is stored.

It just means the present is slightly bumpy. It is not the exact same thing for everyone.

But for two people next to each other their clocks must be so close the difference is imperceptible.

The point is we don't know. We don't know we can do it--but we don't know we can't, either.

When you don't know if the gods exist the rational position is not to believe they do until it is proven otherwise.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Every claim Einstein made was tested before it was believed.

We aren't saying time travel is possible. We are saying it's unknown whether it's possible or not. You are the one asserting certainty that science doesn't support.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I also suspect that large dinosaurs would be about as rare in the forests as any apex mammalian predator. So not a major problem with avoiding.

The only apex predator around here is very shy, the fact that I have not encountered one is no surprise.

In areas where the apex predators are not so shy--some days in lion country, one scary encounter at pretty close range. (A lion watched as the driver repaired the truck. We had an armed ranger along but I have my doubts about whether he had enough gun.)

Besides, the dinosaur I would really worry about is the velociraptor rather than the T-rex.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It is an easily testable claim to move to any part of the world and see what happens.

I have been on intercontinental flights. At no point did the the plane dip down, and when I arrived, up was still up and down was still down. Therefore, the Earth is flat, Einstein was a scamster, and absolute time exists.

Or something.

Oh, come on now! The plane most certainly did tip, at least 4 times per flight (takeoff, leveling out, descending, landing.) That's not proof of a flat Earth.

I do have two proofs, though:

1) I have headed west. A long, long way west, yet somehow I arrived back home. Science wants reproducible results? Did it again, same result. I have been living two days in the future for nearly 40 years now.

2) I've seen it with my own eyeballs. Looking towards the first true sunrise with the horizon more than three miles below me I could detect a slight curvature to the horizon. (Black ground, a line of fire on the horizon, a not quite so black sky above. Once more detail was visible I could no longer detect the curvature.)

 

[untermensche]

well, monotously.

Way to miss the point though. The earth isn't exactly known to be flat, so neither is correct in reality, on the surface of a planet.

Way for you to miss the point. Nothing in nature is uniform.

If the present is a tiny range of time, a probability within time, not a flat line, and isn't perfectly smooth you somehow say the past exists.

 

[untermensche]

When you don't know if the gods exist the rational position is not to believe they do until it is proven otherwise.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Every claim Einstein made was tested before it was believed.

We aren't saying time travel is possible. We are saying it's unknown whether it's possible or not. You are the one asserting certainty that science doesn't support.

You are saying it may be possible. That is a positive assertion.

You are saying it may be possible for an observer to rip themselves from the unidirectional flow of time and somehow travel to a past that is stored somehow eternally.

What evidence allows you to make this extraordinary positive assertion?

 

[DBT]

The point is that it is not known whether time travel to the past is possible or not, science does not eliminate the possibility...yet you do claim knowledge. You emphatically claim that it is impossible.

 

[untermensche]

The point is that it is not known whether time travel to the past is possible or not, science does not eliminate the possibility...yet you do claim knowledge. You emphatically claim that it is impossible.

If there is no evidence some extraordinary claim is possible then the default position is that it is not possible.

If you see a bird fly it is not an extraordinary claim to say that possibly a human could also fly.

If you see life on one planet it is not an extraordinary claim to say there may be life on other planets.

If there is evidence of any observer somehow removing themselves from the flow of time it is not an extraordinary claim to say it is possible.

 

[DBT]

The point is that it is not known whether time travel to the past is possible or not, science does not eliminate the possibility...yet you do claim knowledge. You emphatically claim that it is impossible.

If there is no evidence some extraordinary claim is possible then the default position is that it is not possible.

If you see a bird fly it is not an extraordinary claim to say that possibly a human could also fly.

If you see life on one planet it is not an extraordinary claim to say there may be life on other planets.

If there is evidence of any observer somehow removing themselves from the flow of time it is not an extraordinary claim to say it is possible.

The possibility of time travel to the past is not excluded by physics.
Whether it is possible or not has not been determined.
It is not known whether time to the past is possible or not.
You claim knowledge.
You claim knowledge by declaring time travel to the past is impossible.
Your position is not justified.

 

[bilby]

well, monotously.

Way to miss the point though. The earth isn't exactly known to be flat, so neither is correct in reality, on the surface of a planet.

Way for you to miss the point. Nothing in nature is uniform.

If the present is a tiny range of time, a probability within time, not a flat line, and isn't perfectly smooth you somehow say the past exists.

This is a rehash of the dumb creationist assertion that microevolution is real, but macroevolution is not.

If you have some of anything, you can have any finite quantity by simply repeating the method that got you some in the first place. If you can walk to the corner store, you can walk across the entire continent, given sufficient time to do so.

If there's no absolute present - if the Apollo astronauts disagree with their earthbound friends about 'now' to the tune of a few microseconds - then you can achieve any finite degree of disagreement by simply repeating their journey an arbitrary number of times.

This is a complex and highly technical process known to mathematics and science as "multiplication".

 

[Treedbear]

...
... because according to Relativity, the time it took the light to get from Andromeda to our two observers wasn't exactly 2.5 million years. It was a few hours longer for the guy on the side of the earth rotating away from Andromeda than for the guy on the side of the earth rotating toward Andromeda. (That's because the approximately 2.5 million light year distance between earth and Andromeda is relativistically foreshortened by different amounts for them, to the tune of several billion miles, while light goes at the same speed for both.)

So if both guys calculate what time it is in Andromeda right now, they'll get two different answers. Which one is right?

I'm thinking that's incorrect. The foreshortening only takes place during the time the person in question is rotating towards Andromeda rather than over the entire distance the light traveled. In the end the effect of the rotational velocity on space-time dilation for an orbiting body averages out to zero.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I also suspect that large dinosaurs would be about as rare in the forests as any apex mammalian predator. So not a major problem with avoiding.

The only apex predator around here is very shy, the fact that I have not encountered one is no surprise.

In areas where the apex predators are not so shy--some days in lion country, one scary encounter at pretty close range. (A lion watched as the driver repaired the truck. We had an armed ranger along but I have my doubts about whether he had enough gun.)

Besides, the dinosaur I would really worry about is the velociraptor rather than the T-rex.

I remember the diagram in high school biology of how many predators prey and land can support. The Pyramid of Biomass. There will be as many apex predators as the land can support. That will be as true in the Cretaceous as now. So we'd expect about the same risk of being eating by something big and terrifying. Sweden has plenty of uncultivated pristine wilderness where we have a balance of predators to prey. As a human you'd have to be damn unlucky to run into something that's going to try to kill you. There's loads of wolves. They don't give a fuck. They'll just kill you for fun, because they're all assholes. Even that is rare. Bears will kill you because they're bored. Very rare. And people go hiking in these woods all the time.

https://www.toppr.com/ask/content/concept/pyramid-of-biomass-266592/

 

[Jokodo]

When you don't know if the gods exist the rational position is not to believe they do until it is proven otherwise.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Every claim Einstein made was tested before it was believed.

We aren't saying time travel is possible. We are saying it's unknown whether it's possible or not. You are the one asserting certainty that science doesn't support.

You are saying it may be possible. That is a positive assertion.

When did "I don't know" become a positive claim? Arguably "... and neither do you" is a positive claim, but it's not extraordinary - not knowing is the default -, nor unsupported - the lack of any reference of modern physics in your line of reasoning strongly supports the conclusion that you've reached your conviction by declaring what you want to be for true. Unless you're a God who can wish laws of physics into existence, that's not a valid method to discern facts about the world, and it's certainly not science.

 

[Bomb#20]

Besides, the dinosaur I would really worry about is the velociraptor rather than the T-rex.

Wuss.

 

[untermensche]

well, monotously.

Way to miss the point though. The earth isn't exactly known to be flat, so neither is correct in reality, on the surface of a planet.

Way for you to miss the point. Nothing in nature is uniform.

If the present is a tiny range of time, a probability within time, not a flat line, and isn't perfectly smooth you somehow say the past exists.

This is a rehash of the dumb creationist assertion that microevolution is real, but macroevolution is not.

You claim miracles are possible without any evidence they could ever be possible.

You claim an observer could possibly go backwards in time.

And you base this on what?

An unsupported speculation that isn't tested.

If you have some of anything, you can have any finite quantity by simply repeating the method that got you some in the first place.

Of course.

If you have some velocity then of course your velocity can increase without limit.

The universe has no limits.

If "the present" between two observers can vary even a little bit it can vary indefinitely.

Of course.